When the day finally comes that Raul Flores loses his job, he will face
a bitter search for another one. “I've got a family to support,
so I've got to do whatever it takes,” he says. “It's going
to be hard. The economic situation is not good, but I can't just wait
for something to happen to me.”

That puts Flores in the same
boat as millions of other U.S. workers. Last month alone 533,000 workers
lost their jobs, the highest figure in 34 years. A week ago, the heads
of the big three auto companies were in Washington DC, pleading for loans
to keep their companies afloat. As a price, lawmakers and pundits told
them they had to become “leaner and meaner,” and in response,
General Motors announced it would close nine plants and put tens of thousands
of workers in the street. Ford and Chrysler described a similar job-elimination
strategy.

What makes Flores special?
He didn't just accept the elimination of his job. Instead, he sat in at
the Chicago plant where he worked for six days, together with 240 other
union members at Republic Windows and Doors.

Republic workers were not demanding
the reopening of their closed factory. They’ve been fighting for
severance and benefits to help them survive the unemployment they know
awaits them. Yet their occupation can't help but raise deeper questions
about the right of workers to their jobs. Can a return to the militant
tactics of direct action, that produced the greatest gains in union membership,
wages and job security in U.S. history, overturn “the inescapable
logic of the marketplace”? Can employers, and the banks that hold
their credit lines, be forced to keep plants open?

Unlike the auto giants, Republic
was not threatening bankruptcy. It makes a “green product,”
Energy-Star compliant doors and windows that should be one of the bedrock
industries for a new, more environmentally sustainable economy. But Bank
of America, as it was receiving $25 billion in Federal bailout funds,
pulled the company's credit line. Perhaps that alone led President-elect
Obama to support the workers. The bank-enforced closure undermines his
program for using environmentally sustainable jobs to replace those eliminated
in the spiraling recession. He called Republic workers “absolutely
right. What's happening to them is reflective of what's happening across
this economy.”

Federal law requires companies
to give employees 60 days notice of a plant closure, or pay them 60 days
severance pay, to give them breathing room to find other jobs. Republic
workers got three days, and no money. “They knew they'd be out on
the street penniless,” says Leah Fried, organizer for Local 1110
of the United Electrical Workers. “When the negotiating committee
came back to the factory to report that the company didn't even show up
to talk with them, the workers were so enraged they voted unanimously
not to leave until they got their severance and vacation pay.”

While the workers' acted to
gain their legally-mandated rights, the plant occupation resurrects a
tactic with a radical history. In 1934, auto workers occupied the huge
Fisher Body plants in Flint, Michigan, and when the battle was over, the
United Auto Workers was born. Sitdown strikes spread across the country
like wildfire. Occupying production lines in plant after plant, workers
won unions, better wages, and real changes in their lives.

Seventy years later, the workers
who have inherited that legacy of unionization and security are on the
brink of losing everything. Just since 2006 the United Auto Workers has
lost 119,000 members. The threat of plant closure has been used to cut
the wages of new hires in half, to $14.50, the same wage paid on the window
lines at Republic, where the union is only four years old.

Flores certainly hopes that
those whose livelihoods are in peril will rediscover the tactic. “This
is the start of something,” he urges. “Don't let it die. Learn
something from it.” And the sitdown was successful. After six days
sitting-in, and a rally of 1000 people in front of the bank, JP Morgan,
another beneficiary of Federal assistance that owns 40% of Republic, put
up $400,000, and Bank of America another $1.35 million. That was enough
to pay the legally-mandated severance, the workers’ accrued vacation,
and two months of health care. Flores and his coworkers then voted to
end the occupation.

Fran Tobin, midwest organizer
for Jobs with Justice, a coalition of labor and community groups with
chapters around the country, shares Flores' optimism. “I think this
is not the last time we're going to see American workers occupying American
plants, as part of a move to save jobs and turn things around,”
he says. Organizers for Jobs with Justice are fanning out with a program
they call a “Peoples' Bailout.” “We need to ask, 'What
kind of an economy and recovery do we want?'” Tobin emphasizes.
He lists funds for a jobs program, rather than huge loans to banks, a
moratorium on home foreclosures, investment in infrastructure repair,
and helping local and state governments (and public worker) survive the
crisis without massive budget cuts.

Flores, Tobin and Fried all
agree that none of those demands can be won without unions and workers
willing to fight for them. That makes the Republic plant occupation more
than just a local confrontation. “This might not be the right tactic
in every situation, but people know we need to be fighting back,”
Fried says.

Will the unions in auto plants
and other workplaces hit by layoffs take up the challenge of the Republic
workers? To Flores, they have to do something more than just watch the
elimination of their jobs. “We've got to fight for our rights,”
he emphasizes. “It's not fair that they just kick us out on the
street with nothing. Somebody has to respond.”